Flyers' Celebration Ruined Canucks Earn 4-4 Tie With Two Goals In Third

October 23, 1992|by GARY R. BLOCKUS, The Morning Call

Eric Lindros turned on the hits and Mark Recchi turned on the red lights at the Spectrum last night, but Pavel Bure and Tom Fergus ruined a victory celebration.

Recchi scored a pair of goals 2:13 apart to start the third period and Lindros added a goal sprinkled with a healthy dose of crunching hits, but the Flyers had to settle for a 4-4 tie with the Vancouver Canucks.

Recchi scored on a blue-line giveaway 2:48 into the final period to snap a 2-2 tie and added a wildly-timed slapshot from between the circles at 5:13 as the Flyers remained below .500 at 3-4-2.

Bure scored with 12:21 left in the game and Fergus knotted the game with his first goal of the season with 7:33 remaining in regulation.

The Flyers scored the first goal in a game for only the second time all season as former Soviet defenseman Dimitri Yushkevich recorded his first NHL goal.

Yushkevich sent a slapshot from the top of the slot past goalie Kay Whitmore after the defenseman took a backpass from Doug Evans just 1:37 into the game.

The opening euphoria saw the Flyers outshoot the Canucks 6-0 over the first 7:12 only to trail in shots 12-10 by the end of the period.

Jim Sandlak knotted the score at 1-1 when he went top shelf on Dominic Roussel with a quick release from deep in the right circle after taking a feed from Cliff Ronning, who carried the puck down the slot.

Philadelphia surrendered a power-play goal with 33 seconds left in the first and has trailed after the first period in all nine games this season.

Ronning was behind the net and centered to Geoff Courtnall, who managed to put the puck into the goal despite heavy traffic from the Flyers' defense.

The late-period score was the fifth time this season (not counting an empty-netter) that the Flyers have surrendered a goal in the last minute of a period.

Lindros got the Flyers even with 8:06 left in the middle period on a goal-mouth deflection of Gord Hynes' blast from the right point.

Recchi set the play up by dashing for the puck behind the left side of the net. Instead of going directly for the puck, Recchi checked Jyrki Lumme and tried to feed Lindros in the slot.

The pass was just a tad off and floated to the right point for Hynes, whose rising shot was deflected by No. 88 for his fifth goal of the season, tying him with Brian Benning for the team lead.

Recchi was a wild man to start the final period. Lindros leveled Lumme behind the net, then Recchi got him again seconds later. Lumme eventually carried the puck out of the Canucks' zone and touched it off Trevor Linden's skate, sending it backward to the blue line.

Recchi was the first to make the cut and skated in all alone on Whitmore for the go-ahead goal. Just over two minutes later, he timed a wild slapshot off Greg Paslawski's dish off the left boards and beat Whitmore to the glove side.

The Canucks made it a game with 12:21 left in the period when Pavel Bure, the NHL's Rookie of the Year last season, beat Garry Galley through the right circle, skated across Roussel and beat the goalie's forward split to the left side.

Tom Fergus scored his first goal of the season to tie the game with 7:33 remaining. Sergio Momesso dumped the puck behind the net and it came out very quickly to the right circle, where Fergus launched a slapshot on the surprising rebound and beat Roussel underneath the right arm.